Woodland caribou on Michipicoten Island, Lake Superior. Credit: photo by Christian Schroeder.
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Climate Ghosts: Migratory Species in Anthropocene
(Brandeis University Press, 2021)

Climate Ghosts is based on my 2019 Mandel Lectures in the Humanities at Brandeis University.  I ask: How has climate change affected three iconic migratory species of the northern forest: woodland caribou, Great Lakes sturgeon, and  loons? These species were once abundant in the Great Lakes region, but habitat change, toxics, and over-hunting decimated their populations by the early 20th century.

Conservation efforts recovered breeding populations of loons and sturgeon,  but woodland caribou are now ghost species throughout much of their former range. On a few islands along the north coast of Lake Superior, populations persist, but predators threaten them--and predator populations are driven by complex relationships between forest industrialization, energy development, moose populations, and climate change. How have the relationships between humans and these other species been influenced by climate change? How do animal migrations influence the mobilizations of toxics into distant spaces, and how does climate change in turn affect toxic mobility? Can restoring these species help in the fight against climate change? 

Woodland caribou, lake sturgeon, and common loons, migratory species that breed in the boreal north, have been the focus of decades of restoration efforts. Yet all three species remain at risk in northern landscapes. The project seeks to understand what we can learn from past efforts at understanding and managing migratory species, with the ultimate goal of contributing to more sustainable strategies for the Anthropocene.
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As Libby Robin (2018) argues, “Environmental humanities extend the idea of the human within the transdisciplinary mode of environmental studies. They also engage with the ethical and justice dimensions of environmental change, including climate change.”
Woodland caribou on Michipicoten Island, Lake Superior. Credit: Christian Schroeder.
Common loon and chick. By Mike's Birds from Riverside, CA, US  [CC BY-SA 2.0  (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Common loon at Horn River, North West Territories. Credit: Joseph Sands, USFWS

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Translocating woodland caribou to the Slate Islands, Winter 2018. Credit: Christian Schroeder. 
Historic and current range of woodland caribou 2012. The current distribution of boreal caribou is shown in brown. The estimated southern extent of historical woodland caribou distribution is indicated by the dashed line. Credit: Environment Canada.
Recent range of Lake Superior woodland caribou. Currently, only small populations persit on Michipicoten Island southwest of Wawa Ontario and the Slate Islands sound of Terrace Bay. Note the discontinuous range between the Lake Superior population and the more northern populations. Credit: Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry.